posted December 03, 2000 12:31 PM            

Learn more: Parkside Plaza Traffic Report

Details: October | November

These are very long downloads, so I also put it into the usual Plaza directory that you FTP to. You'll find it quicker to FTP the two files -- plazanov00.htm (1.2M) and plazaoct00.htm (741K) -- from there to your hard drive.

What can you learn from these stats? Do you see any trends? Do you see an anomalies (outliers)? Do you see anything that would make you do anything differently?

The traffic so far is mostly maintenance. You checking out your own pages to see how they look. The next large category is our in-class activity during your presentations. The rest is ... what? Please speculate.

Can you suggest something you and your classmates can do to increase the non-maintenance traffic?

posted December 04, 2000 06:36 PM            

I will make a prediction that December site stats will show a sharp increase as the class once again scrambles to build their project web sites. Further, traffic will increase as the class visits these sites during presentations.

I think the stats are also telling in that outside people are checking the student webs probably because we’re running around telling our friends, “Look what I did”. I was also surprised about the international traffic (excluding Hungary). Although, the traffic is not high, who has relatives in the UK or are these accidental hits?

There also seem to be some good hits on the “thank you” pages. I going to guess this is not as much for form submission as it is for form maintenance. A good portion of the class had difficulty in getting their forms to work correctly.

posted December 04, 2000 08:15 PM            

What stuck out to me the most was the Most Requested Pages. Some of the most requested were people who are not even taking the course right now. Perhaps they are using the pages for some purpose/advantage or Benedek Kaldy is telling all his friends and family back in Hungary to go and check out his site.

The Number of Users Per Site Visit also stuck out. 1 visit was overwhelmingly the champion in this particular category. Perhaps web-users are falling on our web-pages by accident or are just there to check out some information or a specific feature out.

posted December 05, 2000 01:19 PM            

I think that in order to increase non-maintenance traffic, we'd have to mount some sort of PR campaign for people to come look at what we can do - similar, tho smaller in scale, to the Digital Wares event. At this point, I'm not sure I'd want to put my home page on my resume as an example of my work, mainly because of the content. I'm not ashamed to be a Sabres fan, but I think the content should be a little more serious if you're showing it off to a prospective employer.

posted December 05, 2000 03:16 PM            

If she doesn't do it at the Plaza, she should do it elsewhere and link to it from the Plaza. That goes for all of the MBA students. If you don't keep up with your Plaza sites, you should keep a professional site elsewhere and link to it from here.

posted December 06, 2000 05:41 PM            

To increase non-maintenance usage, Amanda's idea to set off some type of PR campaign is great. Here are a couple of "what if" scenarios:

- What if the MBASO web page were linked to the Medaille College website?
- What if the MBASO link were set up similar to Leslie's links when she used dynamic html during her presentation on merchant accounts? With the click of the mouse, your at Parkside Plaza.
- Taken a step further, as you hoover over the MBASO logo/link (Andy's presentation), What if the option to click on the Parkside Plaza site were made easily accessible?

In response to Doug's latest question, I believe that the candidate providing the URL is the stronger applicant. Why? Because the perspective employer can base his/her decision to hire the employee based upon the content of what is behind the URL. The old saying, "Talk a Good Game" does not apply to employing web personnel.

I imagine that I'd better begin to make my web page look a little more serious.

posted December 07, 2000 03:30 PM            

Amanda stated above that we should publicize the student web
pages. Lillian mentioned great ideas about that, such as having a link to the Medialle college website. In order to generate hits on my own page I recently asked friends to ask friends to access the page using my URL.

posted December 09, 2000 09:34 AM         

(1)We could have our sites linked to as many mba sites as possible. If someone types in a search for mba programs, etc, our student web pages should be a link.
(2)What if we linked our pages to business sites for example if we link to subjects in business eg marketing, multimedia,etc.
(3)Of course linking to the MBASO and Medaille is a great idea but of course we could show up in a search for Harvard, Princeton and Yale - perhaps the preppies may be impressed with Medaille's MBA program

The whole-show-your-experience thing on the net is great and quite efficient for up and coming super employees. For someone like me in the design profession its great because it will save a lot of money on copying and printing out your graphics for presentation portfolios. Maybe on my next job application under experience I'll put www.riccistreet.net/dwares/plaza/mills/index.html and see what happens

PEACE

posted December 31, 2000 10:42 AM            

To increase the amount of non-maintenance traffic to our sites, we need to increase the number of "keywords" in our code so we are more susceptible to search engines. I like the idea of allowing people to link to our sites directly from the Medaille web site. I think students who are thinking of attending Medaille's MBA program should get an idea of the material being taught in the program. I also think if students in the program knew that their sites were being viewed by several potential students, they would work even harder on them. That's just my opinion. To increase the amount of overall traffic at Riccistreet, I think that more classes have to take advantage of the bistro. If all of the classes in the program used the bistro to communicate ideas or problems, the traffic would be significantly higher. I think it is an opportunity that is being wasted.

posted December 31, 2000 11:07 AM            

quote:

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If all of the classes in the program used the bistro to communicate ideas or problems, the traffic would be significantly higher. I think it is an opportunity that is being wasted.

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Over half of next mod's MBA 602 students, over three-quarters of next mod's MBA 601 students, and all of next mod's MBA 623 and capstone students will have taken MBA 600/604 with me. As Bistro veterans, they all have accounts and they know its value. Is this critical mass? How much input do students have into a teacher's pedagogy?

As a colleague, I'm more than happy to show the other faculty what to do. The examples of the MBA 600 and 604 forums are in plain view.

Any suggestions are most welcome.

posted January 01, 2001 08:03 PM            

I know that I like to show and tell others about my web page. Granted it's still in progress, but to let others see how it's changed and what I've learned in just a few months still amazes me and my friends.

posted January 08, 2001 09:52 AM            

I know I have given the URL to friends and family to get their input and to show them what I've been doing, however I haven't shared it with coworkers or anyone professionally. However, I would like to spend time over the summer refining my page and eventually using it to better sell myself to prospective employers. I agree that it is also a wonderful way to set Medaille MBA's apart from others. Perhaps the school should think about how to use it as a selling point to prospective students and faculty.

I also agree with Amy that other teachers here need to start using the Bistro more. In a class I took with Dr. Lillis, extra points were given if we registered and used the bistro to talk about class issues. However there were only 4 students in the class so it didn't get to far.

I really think Doug has tapped into something that could be much more beneficial to the entire program.

posted January 14, 2001 06:09 PM            

"Let's turn it around. You're on the search committee at your place of employment. One candidate whom you're interviewing has an MBA and claims to have experience on the Web. The other has an MBA and gives you a URL that leads to examples of her academic work, her professional interests, and gasp! her interest in the Sabres. Who's the stronger candidate, all else being equal?"

…I really need to update my Gnome site and put something more serious and more professional out there…where does the time go?…anyway, I played around with the “Find” feature under “EDIT” to see specifically where and how my site measured in the overall scheme of things. It was interesting to see the traffic flow changes…due to my site being so off the wall, I did not communicate my sight to my friends and family so most of my traffic was maintenance or of other classmates. I can see where server information would be extremely helpful for marketing purposes and developing a website appropriately.